Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

These chocolate cupcakes are easy to make and taste delicious. They get their extra chocolate-y flavour from both cocoa powder and grated milk chocolate. Perfect topped with smooth chocolate buttercream.

As promised, here’s the recipe for my yummy chocolate cupcakes, all ready for the creation of my build-your-own cupcakes index which I’ve been busy working on and will be sharing with you soon. The idea is to have all of my cupcakes and buttercream recipes in one place so you can mix and match (with maybe a hidden centre in the middle too 🙂 ). The index is also going to have a round up of all of my fancier cupcake creations, such as raspberry trifle, white russian or millionaires’ shortbread as well.

These chocolate cupcakes are based on the same recipe as my chocolate birthday cake, which gets its extra chocolate-iness from using a combination of both cocoa powder and grated chocolate. I’ve used milk chocolate in the recipe (as I prefer it slightly sweeter) but I’ve been assured by readers that have tried the recipe that it works just as well with dark chocolate too.

These cupcakes are topped with my chocolate buttercream. For a change I used dark chocolate (OK, I went to the cupboard and discovered someone had eaten all my milk chocolate – I’m blaming Jon!). The dark chocolate worked really well, I’d definitely recommend it if you prefer a slightly richer flavour.

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

These chocolate cupcakes are easy to make and taste delicious. They get their extra chocolate-y flavour from both cocoa powder and grated milk chocolate. Perfect topped with smooth chocolate buttercream.

Divide the mixture evenly between the 12 cupcake cases (I use a cupcake scoop to help split it evenly).

Put the tin into the oven and cook the cupcakes for 20-25 minutes. After 20 minutes put a skewer in the middle and check if it comes out clean. If it does they're done, if not pop them back in for a couple more minutes and check again.

Once cooked, remove the cupcakes from the oven and leave them to cool in the tins for a few minutes.

Remove the cupcakes from their tin and pop them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

NOTES

Want chocolate cake but can't have dairy? Take a look at my dairy-free version of this recipe.

Have you tried this recipe? Please leave a comment and rating at the bottom of the page to let others know what you thought.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

You need to add the chocolate in some form other wise it won’t have enough flavour (it will work as a cake, but it isn’t nearly chocolatey enough in my opinion).

If you have the chocolate but don’t want to grate it then you can melt it instead. Melt it and leave it to cool to room temperature. Mix together all of the other ingredients and then mix in the melted chocolate.

GLMsays

May 22, 2020 at 4:28 pm

140 is not hot enough so even after 25 minutes they were still not cooked

It sounds as though your oven could run a little colder than others (sadly they can all be a bit inconsistent). I’d suggest bumping the heat up a little or leaving them in for a little bit longer and you should find they’re perfectly baked.

Daniellesays

May 10, 2020 at 5:08 pm

Cakes turned out light and moist. My 10year old found them easy to make and is looking forward to using the birthday chocolate recipe to make her dads birthday cake. That nice had to have 2!!

Tried this and turned out really good, but have made them twice after and even after 22 minutes in the oven I put the cocktail stick and it’s got stuff on it so put them in again for another 3 mins and when they came out they had sunk and are more brownie texture and gooey. Don’t know what is going wrong any advice ?

Hmmm, it’s a bit of a mystery why the worked first time and not after that.

The reason the collapsed and went fudgey was most likely because you checked them before they were cooked in the middle. But why weren’t they cooked?

It could be…

1) You used larger cupcake cases so there was more mixture in each one – this will mean they take longer to cook. 2) You baked more at once so your oven was fuller – there is less space for the heat to circulate around the cakes so they take longer to cook, meaning they’re underdone at the normal time. 3) Your oven temperature has gone out of alignment – if it’s a little too cool then they won’t be baked through. I’d recommend getting an oven thermometer to check the temperature of your oven.

Sheronsays

November 12, 2019 at 11:21 pm

Turned out great. 20 mins was too long though, so I did 15 and left them in for 5 mins with oven off. Kids enjoyed them. Shame I can’t post a picture.

I’m new to baking and this recipe is really easy to follow and the cupcakes were amazing. I substituted grated chocolate for chocolate chips as a time saver so was worried they might not turn out great, but they were amazing, Thank you so much, can’t wait to try the vanilla cupcakes next.